Page 15 of Crossed By the Stars
“How is Benita?” Jada asked, lips curling.
I shrugged. “She was fine when I left her in Rio last month.”
“Trouble in paradise, Armaud? Who would have thought the French god couldn’t keep his girlfriend happy?”
I put a hand to my chest and gave her my most charming smile. “She was more than satisfied when I left her,mon petit bijou.”
We both paused as the nickname dangled in the air. I’d only used it once before, after our mouths had landed on intimate parts and taken us over the edge into a sea of emotions neither of us had expected.
Without giving her a chance to comment on the slip I’d made, I said, “Benita and I agreed it was time we went our separate ways.”
“Because she wanted you to propose?”
She had wanted to marry me, but not because she loved me. She’d wanted it because our worlds fit and because her father’s kitty was dwindling in a manner that would require her to give up her lifestyle if she didn’t find someone to pay her credit card bills. While she’d been disappointed when I’d called it quits, she’d been far from miserable.
“Benita wasn’t the one for me. I’m determined to marry for love, just like my father, and Benita loves no one more than herself,” I said. My pulse quickened, veins aching, as I took in Jada’s eyes flashing at me with emotions that neither of us could acknowledge.
“Love doesn’t happen for people like us,” she said quietly.
I shook my head, disagreeing. “It does. Look at Dawson and Violet.”
She snickered. “As much as their bank accounts now prove otherwise, you know they aren’t really from our world.”
I hated that she was right. Dawson had been accepted into our circle of trust-fund kids because he was there with us. He was a plus-one and wouldn’t be denied because of it, but he’d never received his own gilded invitations while he’d been living out of Mandy and Leena’s bed and breakfast in New London. The elite world we traveled in only included those whose families’ accounts had held the right number of zeroes for several decades.
Before I could respond, Ilan and a female chef approached with a cart holding the dessert, a flambé that would dazzle the crowds with the fireEn Feuwas renowned for. Jada and I watched as the chef poured the liquor in a performance worthy of a juggler and then twisted the flame onto the sweet confection. The people in the restaurant applauded softly as the flame disappeared, Jada and I threw in our approval, and then Ilan and the chef left us with the treat.
“My parents married for love,” I told her, coming back to the topic I knew I should leave. “They’re ridiculously happy to this day.”
“Rare exceptions. It doesn’t happen for most of us.” She shrugged, barely fiddling with the dessert and refusing to meet my eyes.
Once upon a time, as a teenager with blinders on, I’d thought Jada and I might have a chance to take the earth-shattering attraction we felt and turn it into something more—until my father had pulled me aside and told me the truth about Tsuyoshi Mori. That he was theOyabun. The man leading theKyodaina. With my mother’s family knee-deep in oil from the United Arab Emirates and my father turning his family’s tiny custom design shop into a billion-dollar industry in less than a decade, we couldn’t risk people thinking our fortunes had been built illegally. We couldn’t afford even a whisper to link us to the Moris. They were off-limits. All of them.
So instead of romancing Jada as I’d promised her, I’d gone off to university and ghosted her calls. Neither my father nor I had brought it up again, and when Jada and I met again several years later, we’d acted like our teenage romance had never existed.
I wasn’t proud of it. But I’d done it for my family.
“Rare, but possible,” I said softly, watching the way her pulse quickened in her neck at my words.
“Not for me. I’m never getting married,” she told me, chin lifting, phone flipping over on the table. Daring me. Daring the man who’d stolen her first kiss and then abandoned her to challenge her belief that she was better off alone.
Even though I knew I shouldn’t, I did just as she wished. “You might change your mind if you fall in love.”
I wanted it to be true. My greatest wish was for her to find the happily-ever-after ending that I wanted for myself.
“I won’t ever let a man have that much say in my life again,” she said with a clenched jaw, determination in every syllable she’d uttered. I barely held back my scoff. I didn’t dare remind her that her father was still directing her life. Tonight, he’d requested she meet with him, and she’d gone running.
“Loving someone doesn’t mean losing control,” I said, knowing I should stop the entire line of conversation. It was too dangerous, too close to the whispered dreams of teenagers.
She laughed sarcastically. “Says the man who is all about control.”
I smirked. “That’s completely different.”
I was structured in my own life, and I liked to be in charge in the bedroom. But I’d never directed the lives of the women I’d been involved with.
Jada’s face heated, a soft pink coating the high cheekbones, and I wondered if she was remembering that morning?the single glorious morning where I’d exerted control over her. My body stiffened all the way down at the thought, flames licking inside me at the memories.
She hit the button on her phone to check the time and said, “It’s late. I have to be up at five again tomorrow. Time to take this working womanhome.”
